Long Beach police unit aims to move homeless off the streets

Unsheltered homeless

2. Los Angeles City and County — 53,798 total homeless; 76 percent unsheltered

3. San Jose/Santa Clara City and County — 7,631 total homeless; 74.4 percent unsheltered

4. Long Beach — 2,847 total homeless; 66 percent unsheltered

5. San Francisco — 7,008 total homeless; 61.6 percent unsheltered

Source: The 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress by the Department of Housing and Urban Development

LONG BEACH >> James Miller keeps his small Long Beach apartment immaculate. It is sparsely decorated with a kitchen table, a bookshelf, television and two oversized chairs, but only one gets used nowadays.

Miller and his good friend, Ricci Saul, sat side-by-side in those chairs much in the same way they shared a park bench in Lincoln Park for more than a decade when they called the streets of Long Beach their home.

The journey that brought them to the one-bedroom apartment last summer began in the spring of 2011, when the friends met Long Beach police Officers Chris Roth and Brad Futak, who along with Tom Kirk, a licensed psychiatric technician, make up the department’s Quality of Life Unit.

“We worked hard to get them off the streets and into an apartment,” Futak said as he and Kirk made their rounds on a summer morning in a bronze minivan, reaching out to homeless people to help to get them into community programs and permanently off the streets.

Their months of work paid off when Miller and Saul were approved to move into the apartment at the Patrician, an independent living complex for seniors on Linden Avenue that has also accepted transients looking for permanent homes. Just six weeks after the men moved in, Saul died.

“The streets are hard,” said Miller, fighting back tears as he stood near his friend’s chair but adding he was glad his Saul’s final days were comfortable and secure. “He couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t walk anymore because of his sugar diabetes. I’m grateful for what (the officers) did for us. For him.”

Working the streets

Monday through Thursday, Futak’s minivan can be spotted at local parks and alleyways as the team tries to coax the homeless into shelters and long-term programs.

“I think it’s cool that they’re out here trying to help people,” said Valerie Jones, 56, who is homeless and spends her afternoons at Lincoln Park. Jones said she wasn’t ready to accept the team’s help and that she has places to stay, but there are others who need the services. “They don’t look down on you, and talk to you instead of giving people tickets. They’re good guys. They’re my buddies.”

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The Quality of Life unit was created in 2007 when now-retired Officer Joe Seminara and his partner, Merle Megee, saw a need to bridge the gap between the high number of chronically homeless in the city and the services available to them.

“They were dealing with the problem on a daily basis in the (downtown) area and spoke to their captain at the time, and we were able to start the pilot program,” Cmdr. Rick Rocchi said. “They also built a rapport and trust with the homeless community.”

It’s that trust that has allowed the team to get dozens of people into local programs.

“Long Beach really does have a wide variety of programs and nonprofits that can help those who are homeless, but what they didn’t have was a way to make that connection,” said Helen Najar, commissioner for the Long Beach Police Foundation, a nonprofit that helps fund many of the unit’s activities.

“What I think is so unique about this team is the partnership between the officers and service providers,” Kirk said. “I have never seen such a positive partnership. They truly are the saints of the streets.”

While the team works with anyone who needs help and finds themselves on the streets, they focus on the chronically homeless. A chronically homeless individual is defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as someone who has been continuously homeless for one year or at least four times in the past three years and has a disabling condition, such as a substance use disorder or a mental illness.

Thirty-six percent of the nation’s chronically homeless population is located in California, according to a report released last year by HUD, and 86.6 percent were unsheltered. Long Beach has the fourth-highest rate of unsheltered homeless for major cities in the nation, according to the report.

“We do work with those people who don’t have a place to stay for a few nights or weeks,” Futak said. “But many times they will seek out services to get themselves off the streets. We’re focusing on the harder cases of those who have been on the streets for years and decades.”

Making a difference

Before coming to the Quality of Life Unit two years ago, Futak was a bicycle officer and patrolled the same parks where he now seeks to build the trust of the homeless.

“I gave out a lot of tickets then, but didn’t feel like I was really making a difference,” Futak said. “I feel like we’re making a difference now.”

Futak has been with the team for two years and Roth for about five. Kirk joined the team a few months ago — a sorely needed addition, Futak said.

“Sometimes I may be talking to someone and they have mental health issues, and I may not be able to reach them as well as Tom can with his extensive knowledge and training,” Futak said.

Kirk, who has spent more than two decades working in the mental health field, said his work with the unit has been rewarding.

“When I worked in private practice, it took a longer time to see developing results,” he said. “Here you can see the difference you make almost immediately. You see someone get enrolled into a program or get on a bus back home. You see it happen right then and there.”

The team’s work goes beyond handing out information pamphlets and driving people to shelters.

Roth and Futak have also tracked down the necessary paperwork to get someone started in shelters and community programs.

“I’ve spent hours sitting at the DMV with people in order to get their IDs, to the Social Security office to get a new card,” Futak said. “Some of these people have nothing in the way of documentation.”

Most of the supplies Futak has in the back of the minivan came from donations made by his friends and family members.

“It’s really a great thing because once they learn what I do and who I’m trying to help, they will give me clothes, toys, shoes or whatever I may need out on the streets,” Futak said, pulling out a child’s toy from a box. “I even have a wheelchair and walker in here if I need it.”

Helping hands

On the recent summer morning, Futak and Kirk spotted a man who had been on the verge of agreeing to get help.

Known as Yantzy, the man wearing a jacket on the warm day told Futak his brother was willing to take him in.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Yantzy said. “It’s too hard out here. I want to go home.”

As Kirk spoke with Yantzy, Futak made a call to the man’s brother who lives out of state, to verify that Yantzy and his wife, LaToya, were welcome in their home.

“If your brother says it’s OK, you’re going to get on a bus and be on your way,” Futak told Yantzy and LaToya.

“You know what that means?” Futak asked as the man looked at the officer blankly for a moment. “It means you have to be sober. It means no drinking because they won’t allow you to board the bus if you are drunk.”

Later the officers learned that the couple had not taken the trip.

The project Homeward Bound, a service of the Quality of Life unit, provides homeless individuals who can prove they have a stable home and support system a bus ticket home. The nonprofit Long Beach Police Foundation provides the funds for the project as well as officer training and equipment, however Najar said it continues to be a struggle to provide those items.

“A couple of years ago, the unit was able to reunite 50 families by purchasing bus tickets and sending people home,” Najar said. “But because of lack of funding or donations, last year we were only able to pay for four.”

Living on the streets

Soon after their conversations with Yantzy, Futak and Kirk were called to a paseo in Downtown Long Beach. Business owners had complained that a young couple was living between two trees and a bush along the narrow patch of grass and causing a disruption.

The couple, both in their 20s, at first refused the help Futak and Kirk were offering them.

“What can I do for you to get you help,” Futak asked.

“You can make my mom give a (expletive) about me,” the young woman began to cry. “You can get my kids back. That would be a start.”

Kirk then stepped in to speak to the woman about getting help and working toward her goals.

The couple agreed to receive help at The Mental Health America Village, which offers aid from trained professionals, medication and placement in permanent housing.

Just a few minutes after watching the couple head toward help center, the men spotted a familiar face.

The scruffy man, holding a blanket, had been helped by the team in the past and had even been placed in an apartment in Los Angeles through The Village, but Futak learned the man didn’t like the rules and left.

Kirk and Futak persuaded the man to get more help and drove him back to The Village.

“Yeah, sometimes it can be difficult when you find people back on the street, but when you have stories like James’,” said Futak, referring to Miller and his friend Saul when they moved into their apartment. “It motivates you to keep going.”